


Enchantment

by LostinFic



Series: Hardy x Hannah ficlets [18]
Category: Broadchurch, Secret Diary of a Call Girl (TV)
Genre: F/M, One Shot, Practical Magic AU, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 14:18:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14875368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostinFic/pseuds/LostinFic
Summary: Based on the movie Practical Magic, Hannah is a witch afraid to fall in love, until one of her spells backfires in the best of ways.





	Enchantment

**Author's Note:**

> @meanwhileinpetesworld prompted "Storm Clouds" and @tinyconfusion wrote some inspiring tags.  
> I'm sorry I took a film about sisterhood to write a shippy fic.

Hannah had swam too far. The cliffs were a mere copper line in the distance. Not a soul on the beach, they’d all gone home for supper. 

The water turned grey. It shivered around her, stirred, restless under the gathering clouds. 

Hannah swam towards the beach but the undercurrent pulled her back. Waves sucked at the strength in her legs. Rain fell like a lead curtain. She couldn’t tell the sea from the sky, the beach from the horizon. 

Panic flared in her guts, short-circuited any rational thoughts. She tried to scream for help but waves slapped her face and salty water splashed into her lungs.

* 

_In the conservatory of her aunts’ house on the Isle of Wight, a young Hannah— nine and a half years old to be exact— carefully chose her ingredients. A sprig of valerian, a row of foxgloves, a blackberry leaf. And she whispered to herself: “He will hear my call a mile away. He will quote my favourite books. He can see the future in his dreams.”_

_Jackie walked into the room and watched her sister for a moment. “What are you doing?”_

_“Summoning up a true love spell called ‘Amas Veritas’,” Hannah replied. She sprinkled dried lavender into her wooden bowl and added a bunch of bluebells to it. "He can flip pancakes in the air. He'll have a big heart, as big as the world. Too big. And he’ll wear ties all the time.” She added sunflower petals. “And he'll have golden eyes."_

_“I thought you never wanted to fall in love,” Jackie said._

_The Baxter women were cursed, any man who fell in love with them was doomed. Or so the family legend said. Was it fate or just an accident that had killed her father? Whatever their mother believed, she’d died of a broken heart. And thus, Hannah promised herself never to fall in love._

_But today, she had witnessed a woman begging her aunts to cast a spell on a married man she loved. That woman’s desperation, bordering on madness, had shaken Hannah. There was nothing beautiful or dignified about it. Love dragged you in the mud._

_As the woman pierced a dove’s heart, Hannah had decided to take concrete actions to protect herself from love._

_“That's the point,” she explained to her sister. “The bloke I dreamed of doesn't exist. And if he doesn't exist, I'll never fall in love and die of a broken heart.”_

_She carried her bowl to the balcony on the second floor. The warm night air fluttered the petals, and when she recited the spell, they twirled and rose towards the moon._

* 

Hannah coughed up water. Salt stung her throat. Sand chafed her cheek. 

“You alright? Miss? Bloody hell, d’you have a death wish?” 

With a great effort and a moan of pain, she turned her face towards the voice. A thin man, all scraggly hair and unkempt beard. His tie dangled above her. 

The sun came out, piercing the clouds, and illuminated his face. The brown of his eyes shone almost golden. 

“How…?” She didn’t have the strength to finish her question. 

He helped her to her feet and supported her through the short walk to a small blue house. 

As if he’d expected her, there already were towels and blankets in the living room. 

“I was folding the laundry,” he explained as he arranged towels over the couch. 

She shivered in her bikini, and he promptly draped a knit blanket over her shoulders. Then a second one. He peered into her face— her teeth were chattering— he scrunched up his nose, and covered her legs with a duvet, tucking it tight under her knees and feet. 

“What’s your name?” 

“Hannah.” 

“I’m Hardy... Alec.” 

“Thank you, Alec.”

“How are you feeling? You were pretty out of it.” 

“I feel... tired.”

“Is there anyone you want to call?”

“I don’t know. Not really.”

Well, there were people she _could_ call, but no one she wanted to. Actually, inexplicably, she wanted to stay right here, in this cozy, seaside shack. 

“You can rest here for a while,” he said. 

“How did you find me?” she asked. 

“I know the harbour master.” 

“He came to get you?” That seemed like a strange protocol. 

“I heard you calling,” Alec said. 

“From here?” 

He shrugged and disappeared into a bedroom. 

There was something familiar about Alec Hardy that she couldn’t put her finger on.

The files spread on the coffee table told her he was a policeman. 

In the full bookcase behind the sofa, she spotted a worn-out copy of _Peter Pan_ and even her first novel. Maybe she’d met him at a book signing. He didn’t seem the type.

Underneath, there was a family portrait, outdoors, at some birthday party. Alec with his daughter and wife. “She looks more like a witch than me,” Hannah mumbled.

Alec had changed into a dark blue jumper, and he tossed another one her way. She’d stopped shivering, but put it on anyway. It smelled of Irish Spring soap.

“The books were there when I moved in,” he said.

“And the family picture?”

“I’m on it, aren’t I?” He offered no further explanation.

She tracked his movements as he prepared two cups of tea in the narrow kitchen. He opened crooked cupboards, searching for saucers, sugar and snacks. 

Looking at him was as maddening as having a word on the tip of her tongue.

“Have we ever met?” she asked.

He looked up from the cups he was filling, his eyes wide, and he spilled water from the kettle all over the countertop.

“Shit.” He quickly cleaned up the mess.

He place a cup of tea with two Jammie Dodgers in front of her. “Careful, it’s hot.” 

She stirred milk and sugar into it, and the spoon kept spinning much longer than it naturally would. When he noticed it, she put her hand over the mug— she was slipping. 

She held the cup in two hands and brought it close to her face, she closed her eyes, basking in its warmth for a moment. The first sip soothed her. 

“Are you from Broadchurch?” he asked.

They compared places they’d been to and people they knew, but nothing overlapped. He admitted uncomfortably to appearing in newspapers, but Hannah wasn’t one to keep up with the news. They were complete strangers after all.

Alec was rough around the edges with his scruffy cheeks and sharp nose and blunt questions. She thought of thistles, the floral emblem of Scotland. Still, his actions revealed a genuine concern for her well-being despite his small talk flaws. 

“What were you doing out there?” he asked. 

“Swimming?” 

She took a long sip to dissipate her uneasiness. 

“You were very far into the sea. Do you have suicidal thoughts?” 

“No! No, don’t worry. Really don’t. I was, er, you know, training for… a swimming competition. Amateur competition. Obviously.” 

He quirked an incredulous eyebrow at her excuse and inquired further as only a detective would. Thankfully, he relented when she rubbed her forehead in pain.

If she told him she needed to bathe in the first high tide of the summer equinox to ward off evil, he would laugh in her face. 

Hannah always “scanned” her clients to keep the creepy ones away. Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to her to do the same for this handsome man she’d met at a writing workshop. She’d ignored the red flags, chalked it up to his passionate nature. When she finally listened to her fear and tried to break things off, he already knew too much about her to get rid of him easily. She’d had to resort to belladonna and magic. 

That bloody spell better have worked because it almost cost her her life.

Thinking back on these events, Hannah decided she wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

“Can I use the loo?”

In the tiny bathroom, she found a dusty candle that might have belonged to the previous tenants. She blew softly on the wick until a flame blossomed. Then she whispered one of the few spells she knew by heart. 

The beating of Alec’s heart echoed in her head. There was something off about it. She sensed anger in the irregular beats. But he was not a bad person, on the contrary, his kindness washed over her mind like the gentlest waterfall. 

Her skin goose-pimpled. 

“He’s a good one.” 

She smiled at her reflection in the mirror and then noticed she looked… well, she looked like someone who’d almost drowned. 

She asked Alec’s permission to take a shower, and he lent her sweatpants and a police t-shirt. 

The hot water and soap made her feel better in an instant. 

She noticed— with some satisfaction— the lack of women’s beauty products in the bathroom.

Hannah braided her hair in loose pigtails and rolled the sweatpants’ elastic waistband low over her hips.

When she came out, he stared for a moment. “Looks better on you,” he said, rather gruffly.

*

Hannah had fallen asleep on his couch, and Hardy didn’t know what to do. He stood beside her, hands on hips, contemplating the situation. He couldn’t possibly wake her up and kick her out of his house after what she’d been through today. And to be honest, he enjoyed her presence. He welcomed it even if she snored. He’d been alone for too long.

The last sun rays descended behind the horizon and momentarily alighted her hair.

He’d heard her call for help from impossibly far away. It didn’t make any sense and yet, somehow, it did. He knew why but the explanation vanished as soon as he tried to grasp it.

He thought of _Peter Pan_.

“You know that place between sleep and awake, that place where you still remember dreaming…?” he whispered.

He knew the quote by heart from reading the book multiple times in his childhood and then to Daisy, but in this moment he could not finish saying it. 

“For God’s sake,” he muttered as he adjusted a blanket over Hannah.

*

In the morning, sunlight bounced off the water surface, slipped through the windows and shimmered on the ceiling. Through blurred eyes, Hannah watched it dance above her for a moment. 

How could something so beautiful have nearly killed her yesterday?

A healthy fear and respect of nature was what every witch needed. Perhaps it had been a reminder to not abuse her powers.

A delicious scent pulled her out of her musings. Alec, in a grey t-shirt and PJ bottoms, looked at her from the kitchen doorway.

“You hungry?” he asked.

“Famished.”

“Pancakes?”

Hannah smiled, wide and bright, and jumped to her feet. He returned her smile.

As he cooked the pancakes, she set the little table by the window.

“Let’s see if I can still do this,” he said.

He shook the pan until the pancake slid around then flicked his wrist to make it flip. But the pancake landed on the floor, and all of his good mood vanished in an instant. 

“Give it another try,” she encouraged him.

This time, a few words whispered in latin made sure the pancake landed in the pan.

They wolfed down the pancakes and washed it down with coffee, between bites, they chatted some more.

Hannah had a gift to make people talk, and there was nothing magical about it. She asked the right questions and gave people time to reply rather than rush to fill the silence. And in desperate cases she had a go-to, self-deprecating, anecdote that usually put people at ease. She didn’t need it with Hardy, she didn’t want to use it, she wanted to just be herself.

She told him about her ex and coming to Broadchurch to escape.

“I suppose it’s the place to get away from exes,” he said. 

He told her, in very few words, about his divorce. 

“Why Broadchurch?” she asked.

He scratched his cheek and gave this some thought. “I don’t know… there were other towns where I could’ve worked.” 

The question really seemed to bother him, he kept frowning as they carried dishes to the sink.

“Well, if you hadn’t been here, I would’ve been in trouble,” Hannah said.

He gripped the edge of the sink and stared as it filled with bubbles. “Aye.”

“Did I say something wrong?”

“No… maybe you’re right. Maybe I was here to save you.”

She leaned closer. Her arm brushed his, and he looked at her, straight at her. An earnest gaze that made her ribcage feel too small for her lungs and heart. 

And she realized, she’d experienced attraction before, but never like this, never more than physical.

“Hannah,” he said softly.

She nodded as a lump rose in her throat. She didn’t understand why. 

He cradled her face in his palm, his thumb stroked her cheekbone, and Hannah leaned into his touch. 

“I think I know you,” he said.

She stepped closer to him and placed her hand on his heart. “Yes. Somehow.”

“I was waiting…”

“Between sleep and awake.”

He wrapped his arms around her, pulled her closer to him like two puzzle pieces fitting together. 

She was in a daze. Everything made sense even if it didn’t. In that moment, the only truth worth believing in was that they’d found each other at last.

Both turned their heads at the same time and, with a sigh, pressed their lips together. Shyly, at first, a chaste kiss, until Hannah licked the syrup off his lips. He pressed her against the counter and deepened the kiss, ravenous after a lifetime of waiting. Each caress of tongue and smack of lips brought to light hints and clues, moments, words, images. 

They broke the kiss with a sudden gasp.

“My spell.”

“My dream.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Full Peter Pan quote by J. M. Barrie: "You know that place between sleep and awake, that place where you still remember dreaming? That’s where I’ll always love you. That’s where I’ll be waiting."


End file.
